Sen. Jack Reed, Stages of Freedom & YMCA announce new swim program funding for youth in RI

Photo: from Stages of Freedom

On Friday, January 12th at 10:45 a.m. at the East Side/Mt. Hope YMCA, U.S. Senator Jack Reed, Stages of Freedom and the YMCA of Greater Providence will announce a new grant to teach Rhode Island African American youth about swim safety, encouraging participation in swimming, and decreasing drowning rates.

Teaching children to learn to swim provides them with a skill that lasts a lifetime, boosts self-esteem and confidence, offers opportunity for fun and healthy exercise, and can help save lives.

Thanks to a new $200,000 federal earmark secured by Senator Reed, Stages of Freedom and the YMCA of Greater Providence will help close the historic swimming disparity gap by teaching more low-income Black children to swim at no expense to them, personally, through free 6-month memberships and no-cost swimming lessons.

Deemed a national health crisis, Black youth drown five times more often than their white counterparts.  This new federal funding augments Stages of Freedom’s award-winning Swim Empowerment program that has operated for nine years at 9 partnering YMCAs across the state. The initiative seeks to ensure that Black youth do not drown, become proficient swimmers, improve health and wellness, and expand their life opportunities.

Preventing drowning is a top priority at YMCAs across the country.  Fatal drowning is the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children 5 to 14 years of age, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Children aged 1 to 4 die from drowning more than any other cause of death. 

This problem is particularly prevalent among the Black community and other minority communities where children lack swimming experience.  A YMCA report found that 64 percent of Black/African-American children cannot swim and Black youth are at the highest risk for drowning.  And the CDC’s Drowning Facts shows that for every child under age 18 who dies from drowning, another 7 receive emergency department care for nonfatal drowning.

The program is open to all low income youth 5 to 19 years old.

The East Side/Mt. Hope YMCA has a heated indoor pool and offers a range of swimming lessons, water enrichment, and aquatic readiness programs to the community, including Swim Starters, Swim Basics, and Swim Strokes.

Fore more information on Swim Empowerment, a program of Stages of Freedom: SWIM!